Main menu

Tag Archives: DMC

Post navigation

Back in February I attended the Craft Hobby & Stitch International trade show at the NEC in Birmingham. And as promised in my previous post I wanted to share some more details with you.

Stitches (as it is most commonly known) is a trade show for the art, craft, fabric, needlecraft and hobby industries. Now in it’s 39th year I have attended the show for the past 16, mainly as an exhibitor during the 10 years I worked at DMC Creative World. As well as being a demonstrator (the showcasing new products and techniques kind, not the placard waving kind!) I would look around the show to check out new trends, products and what our competitors were up to.

The DMC stand back in the day.

The giant photo of a sampler you can see here is one I designed!

Since being freelance I have continued to visit, where possible, as an opportunity to catch up with past colleagues, fellow designers, and meet the magazine editors and companies I do work for.

Over the years it has been interesting to see which particular craft, hobby or product was the most popular at the show – there was the scrapbooking/papercraft/cardmaking phase, the cross-stitch and needlework phase and the fabric phase – but I am always hopeful that it will be a knitting, crochet and yarn filled show! So when I saw this display just outside the exhibition hall, my hopes were raised even further.

Luckily I was not disappointed. There were over 20 yarn companies exhibiting, the most I’ve seen in a long while. Most of the main players from the UK were there including; James C Brett, Designer Yarns, King Cole, Rooster Yarns, Sirdar, Stylecraft, UK Alpaca, Wendy and Twilleys of Stamford. Alongside international brands including; Adriafil, Artesano, Artyarn, Bergere de France, Lion Brand and MillaMia.

Unfortunately I was unable to take photos of all the wonderful knitted garments and gorgeous yarns on these stands (exhibitors don’t take too kindly to it!). Suffice to say it was all very inspiring.

Late last year I was commissioned to design and knit the following pattern leaflets for DMC and I was interested to see how they had been received.

And to have a squish of the yarns!

(Apologies for the quality of some of these photos!)

It struck me whilst gazing at these wonderful colour palettes of yarny goodness how important it is for me to touch and stroke the yarn. It’s all about the texture, colour and smell (!) all of which are very hard to glean from a printed shade card or website. For all these reasons, and more, the Love Your Yarn Shop campaign, culminating in Yarn Shop Day on 3rd May 2014, is bang on! I’ll write more about this and my involvement in a future post.

Very positive meetings were had at Stitches, ensuring plenty of work for the next few months, and I left feeling happy and bouyant with renewed excitement for my craft. ♥

Thanks for stopping by, I really do appreciate it and I’ll see you again soon.

Zoë x

P.S. I realise that since starting this blog I haven’t exactly been prolific and those I have posted recently have all been about February! I have a couple more things to catch up on and then I promise I’ll be back in the here and now!